The university campus was a lot bigger than Archie expected. He knew that it was going to be big, the map Salazar drew for him was hint enough in that regard, but he didn't expect it to be so vast. Alex parked the car half a kilometer down the road from the school, so as to put a suitable distance between it and himself. The buildings were still visible, still dominated their view, but Alex would hopefully be out of sight of any security guards that might want to question him.
"Are you ready for this?" Alex asked, turning to Archie.
The rabbit was already unbuckling his seat belt and giving his gear one final check. "As ready as I can be."
The drive to Waterloo didn't take too long, but it took long enough for day to progress into the afternoon. The pair had waited until evening, when the sun had started its trek towards the horizon, before moving into position for the planned heist.
As night began to fall, Archie stepped out of the car. He took a deep breath, tasting the aether-rich air all around him, and activated his stealth power. He could feel the mana flowing through his body as it flared, and he vanished. He knew he wasn't truly invisible—that was impossible. Stealth powers, as he understood them, used a few different concepts. Camouflage stained the user with an approximation of their background's colours, helping them blend in. The kind of stealth Archie was using, by contrast, was more an illusion to make anyone looking at him simply not see him.
Using his heightened speed and agility, Archie ran towards the campus, keeping low in the grassy fields and off of the road. He had to assume that everyone attending the university was of a higher level than him, and he couldn't discount the possibility that they had illusion dispelling powers—or were outright immune to his stealth power all together. The closer he got, the less grass he had to hide in.
Mana-powered lamps lit the campus walkways as Archie drew near. His mana-sensing powers alerted him to the enchantments burning in the lights, steadily sucking in ambient magic and giving off a warm white glow. As he drew near, the lights seared away at his stealth illusion, exposing him momentarily before he backed away to reapply his power.
"Of course they have illusion purging lights. That's such a basic feature," Archie scoffed in frustration. He crouched in the shadow of a well manicured bush, as he considered his path across the courtyard.
If he remembered Salazar's map right, he was on the west side of the campus. Directly south of his position was the library, and to the north was the main building. A few smaller administrative buildings littered the grounds between the two, with the large courtyard smack in the middle of it all. On the far east side of it all, past one of those administrative buildings, was the towering research hall. That was where Archie would find the cores.
He mentally referenced Salazar's map. If he accessed the main building, he could hit the custodial staff room and Snow's office in a quick run. He could get an access key for the research hall and check Snow's office for any cores. Despite the setting sun and darkening sky, it was still early evening. Archie wasn't sure it was worth the risk to hit Snow's office just yet. The old man might be in there, and there was no way in hell Archie would be able to fend him off.
"Okay. Key card first, research hall second, and Snow's office last," Archie mused. The route would require a lot of doubling back, but it was better than risking encountering the dean.
Archie stuck to the shadows as a pair of students carrying heavy backpacks passed by him on the walkway from the library to the lecture building. Staying just out of sight, he slunk around behind them, making sure to stay well away from the illusion-dispelling lamps in the process. He could feel their enchantments searing away at his mana, even without being directly exposed to their effects.
As they drew closer to the entrance, Archie ducked behind the door to avoid being seen. Once both students were inside, he slipped through the slowly closing automatic door and quickly activated his spider climb power. He leapt as high as his lapine legs would allow and snagged the ceiling with his hands, sticking to them as the power took hold. He hung there limply for only a second, before swinging his feet up and sticking them next to his hands.
"If Zack were here, he'd likely make a joke about how I looked like Spider-man," Archie chuckled quietly to himself, flattening his body agains the roof tiles. "Spider-hare? Whatever."
Once again mentally referencing Salazar's map, Archie made his way through the building. Crawling on the ceiling was slow, but it was much easier to stay out of sight than to attempt slinking along the floor. The freshly polished tile flooring was shiny and partially reflected anything standing on it. There were hardly any shadows to hide in, either. The fluorescent ceiling lights were spaced in a way that any shadow one might cast was filled in with another. It was much easier for Archie to avoid the lights from the ceiling than it would be to hide on the floor.
As Archie passed the security office, he could hear chatter within. A large front desk with a plexiglass divider allowed him full view of the security guards within. As Salazar predicted, there were a lot of them. He briefly considered peeking in and trying to snag a key card, but decided against it. His sensitive ears picked up the sound of a half-dozen different voices, even if he could only see the two guards minding the desk and cameras. Even if he managed to hide from all of them, there was no way they wouldn't spot a missing keycard. The last thing he needed were the security guards on red alert.
The custodial office, on the other hand, was a bit harder to find. Unlike the security office, there wasn't a large front desk displaying it for all to see. The office was hidden behind a heavy door, with a small sign beside it to suggest what it was. Archie had to stop and hang off the ceiling to study the symbol, before recognizing the pictogram of a person pushing a trash bin.
"Of course an elitist school would have a poor opinion of their cleaning staff," Archie grumbled, shaking his head. He gave the door handle a quick test and was unsurprised to find it locked tight. Flicking his ears, he strained his hearing to its fullest in an attempt to hear if anyone was on the other side. He could hear nothing beyond the whirr of machinery.
Licking his lip, Archie unsheathed one of his daggers. Working quickly, he jammed the blade into the lock and wiggled it around. "Mhm, a bit more complicated than that," he grunted in frustration. He didn't think such a simple act would work, but it was worth a shot.
He didn't want to waste time struggling to find a key, though, so instead he fell back on a different trick. As a creature made of mana, Archie's body was just a physical construct that his magic liked to take. It was not, however, the shape it had to take. It took a bit of concentration, but he was able to force the mana in his hand to shift and change, the threads reshaping into something new and different.
It hurt like hell, since he was mentally reconfiguring his physical body, but he managed to keep from screaming by biting down on his tongue. Once the threads were loose, he directed them towards the lock and carefully slotted them into the keyhole. With his mana loose and unraveled, he could feel the lock pins as he pushed them into place. Click, click, click. Once he was sure they were properly set, another twist of the knife opened the door.
The moment the door swung open, Archie relaxed his grip on his mana and allowed it to fall back into place. Instantly his threads wound themselves together once again, taking the shape of his hand. The pain lingered, and he clung to the ceiling as he clutched his hand.
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Not even Zack knew about that trick. It was something Archie had discovered by accident while trying to despawn the rabbits during his core's prolonged slumber. He didn't have direct control over outside mana, but his own magic was fair game. It just hurt like hell, and he didn't like doing it.
As expected, the custodial room was devoid of living people. The thing making noise, as it turned out, was a large trash compactor at the back of the room. Archie ignored it as it cycled, and instead scoured for any sign of keycards. He found them soon enough, hanging on a wall from red lanyards. There were seven hooks in total, and three of them were missing cards—likely those belonged to whichever custodians were working late.
He snagged the closest card and checked the picture. It showed a middle-aged man with large bags under his eyes by the name of C. Loganson. "Thanks for the key, chap," Archie said, slipping the lanyard over his neck and dipping back toward the door.
He gave the lock a quick flick, just to make sure it was unlocked, and deftly slipped back out again. This way, if anyone checked again in the morning, they would assume it had simply been left unlocked. Using the same trick he used to get in, Archie slipped out of the main building. It was getting darker by the second, and he found he had an easier time crawling along the building's outer wall than trying to sneak through the grass. The illusion purging lanterns didn't reach him up there, nor were there anyone who might spot him if he wasn't careful.
He avoided the lit windows and kept largely to the brick portion of the wall, but he made much faster time than he would have had he stuck to the ground. When he drew near, he leapt onto the administrative building and climbed it until he reached the roof. There, he allowed himself to take a quick breather as he considered his next move.
There was a large gap between the administrative building and the research hall. Either Archie would have to run through the open field between them, or find another way in. Of course, there were lamps dotting the field, too.
"Nothing can ever be simple, can it," he growled in frustration. He considered trying to unravel all his mana and slip in as a tangle of fibers, but just the idea of that felt too painful.
He was about to try a back entrance when he noticed a door on the research hall's rooftop. His eyebrows shot up and he felt a smirk tug at the edge of his lips. Of course there would need to be roof access. They had to keep every facet of their building shiny and clean, after all.
Archie gave the courtyard a wide berth, diving once more into the field just off-campus as he took a long, circuitous path around to the back of the shiny building. He spotted a back door next to some large waste disposal bins, but decided against trying to get in through it. He didn't doubt his snagged keycard would open it, but with three other cards unaccounted for he wasn't keen on running into a custodian on duty.
He spider-climbed up the wall, reaching out with his mana and aether senses in an attempt to glean the position of potential cores. Unsurprisingly, he could feel nothing through the building walls. He suspected they were shielded against magical incursion, both to keep monsters at bay and potential spies from rival schools out.
"No doubt the various aetherology institutes are constantly trying to one-up each other," he mused, as he reached the rooftop. "Why else would they only want the best to study magic?"
Archie tapped his stolen key card against a panel next to the door, and smirked as it beeped and opened for him. He dipped inside immediately stuck to the ceiling. He didn't hear any voices nearby, but he wasn't about to take any needless risks.
Finally inside, Archie tuned out the world and searched the floor with his Detect Aether power. Almost immediately he was blinded by the visual information. Unstable mana surged through the building in waves, thick fibers of aether shooting around every corner as it desperately sought an exit. Occassionally a couple fibers would collide with one another, but not for very long. More than once, Archie thought they might have been trying to manifest into a monster, only to be suddenly interrupted.
"Strange," he muttered, switching from Detect Aether to Detect Mana. Almost immediately his perception of the world changed. Gone were the chaotic fibers twisting around every corner. In its place, Archie could detect…
Nothing.
No, not nothing. It took him several seconds to adjust his gaze and realize that he wasn't detecting nothing, but he was simply struggling to see the mana. Focusing, he could see thin strands of blue-red mana tickling at his fur, as though some outside force was trying to get a measure of him.
He was inside a core's influence.
"Hello?" Archie asked, trying to direct his thoughts outward. He didn't know where the core was, but their touch was unmistakable. He couldn't see them, the way he could see Zack, but he was positive their disembodied awareness was somewhere nearby. "Can you hear me?"
There was no reply, but the mana dancing across his fur didn't relent. Archie didn't get the impression it was trying to absorb him, moreso like it was trying to study him.
"Can you talk to me? If yes, please say something. If no, can you give me a sign that you're aware of me?" Archie asked.
For a moment, there was silence. Then, all of a sudden, something appeared on the ceiling next to him. It took Archie a moment to recognize it as a speaker, the way it practically grew out of the ceiling.
"What are you?" A quiet voice crackled through the speaker. It was small and youthful, and Archie had a tough time discerning whether it was male or female. "I've never seen anything like you before."
"My name is Archie. As for wha I am, you may consider me your friend. Can you tell me your name?"
The speaker was silent for a moment before speaking again. "They never gave me a name. They told me I wasn't allowed to have one."
Archie frowned. That was strange. "Who told you that you couldn't have a name?"
"The wizards. Aetherologist. Whatever they call themselves. They told me I was a place, not a person. Places can't have names," the speaker explained. The more they talked, the more Archie got the impression that they were very young. They sounded like a teenage boy on the cusp of puberty, maybe just a year or two past their fifteenth year at most.
"That's a silly thing for them to say," Archie assured them. "I come from a place named Zack. He's very much like you. Almost identical, if I had to guess."
"A place like me? A place named Zack?" The voice was incredulous, like it didn't believe what Archie was telling him. "There is no place like me. I'm a monster."
Archie frowned. "Did the wizards tell you that?" He asked.
"Yes. They told me that I wasn't supposed to exist, that I should be dead. Then, they built this place around me," the small voice explained.
Archie's heart broke. "Where are you, friend?"
The voice was silent for several heartbeats. Archie watched as the red-blue mana peeled away from his fur, leaving him bare and exposed. Again, he switched from Detect Mana to Detect Aether, and watched as the chaotic threads seemed to point the way for him.
"I'm in the lower levels. Deep in the heart of the building," the voice explained. "Can you save me?"
"That is why I'm here, friend," Archie promised him. "I'm here to rescue you and anyone else like you. Are there others? Cores like you?"
"Cores? I… Yes, cores. I know that word. That's what I am, a core. A magical crystal…" The voice grew confident for a moment, before faltering again. "Nnng. I… I don't know. I think there are others, but I can't see them. I can't hear them. I'm sorry, I don't know where they are."
"It's okay, friend. Are there any rooms you can't see into?"
"Yes. There are two rooms obscured from me. One is not far from you, while the other is two floors down. I am in the basement, the lowest level. I can hear loud machinery near my core."
Archie nodded and focused his senses again. As the voice suggested, he could see a pocket around the corner where the aether simply didn't enter. More likely than not it was another core, though whether it was dormant or not Archie couldn't tell. He couldn't see two floors down, but he had no doubt that his new friend was telling the truth about his predicament.
"Thank you, friend. I will come for you as soon as I am able. In the meantime, can you do me a favour?" Archie asked, turning to face the speaker.
"What is it?"
"Tell nobody that I am here. If I am caught, I won't be able to rescue you," Archie said.
"Okay. I can do that. It's not like the others talk to me, as it is. All they do is work on their experiments. I just clean up the loose mana. And… You can call me Matt. I think that was my name…"
"Thank you, Matt. I will be there for you shortly," Archie assured him. He put a hand on the speaker as it melted into the ceiling again, then turned his attention once more to the empty pocket in the aether.
There were potentially three cores in this building, and now Archie was beginning to wonder how many more there were on the campus as a whole.